Some of my best friends are one-party states

"In South Africa, Democracy May Breed One-Party Rule," by Michael Wines, New York Times, 14 April, p. A3.

No surprise here: the party that successfully navigated the nation from apartheid and white-rule to majority rule with a reasonably functioning democracy has come to dominate as a political force within the nation. The African National Congress, which frankly was an open client of the Soviet bloc for many years (so stupid were we that we refused to see the historical writing on the wall), is now the party without peer in South Africa, raising fears that a one-party state is brewing.

This is a misguided fear. One-party states are never the problem. Japan was one for decades, so was South Korea and Mexico and a host of other fine integrating economies of the New Core. So long as the ruling party rotates the leadership on a regular basis, that is not the problem. Real issue is whether or not the ruling party encourages growing economic, social and political connectivity with the outside world, orómore specificallyówith the global economy's Functioning Core. In my mind, the ANC has been doing this in spades, which is why no security experts are writing any more reports warning about the West "losing access" to precious metals in Africa. That was a huge subject when I was a student in the 1980s and we feared the Soviet bloc's relationships with the region's "countries of socialist orientation" would signal a new communist satellite camp in the making.

All of that fear is gone now, as is white-rule in South Africa. Meanwhile, the ANC does its best to act as a pillar for stability in the region, something Pretoria never did under the whites (mischief makers, they), so how we can complain about their success in election after election is beyond me. So long as the top rulers rotate with regularity, I say count your blessings.